Social Media, The G20, And An Earthquake

Nothing can be held back now.  Raw information in real-time.

In Toronto this past weekend, there were probably more spectators with cameras than there were protesters, tweeting, taking pictures and video, and uploading them to Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube; streaming in realtime to UStream, and Justin.tv.  Of all the crap that went down this past weekend in Toronto there is one thing I know for sure:  Everyone now has the opportunity to be heard, everyone can be a reporter.  Nothing can be kept secret anymore, nobody can hide anything.  And it doesn’t matter what your intentions were, or how many previous successes you had; one tweet, one video, seen by the right people will shift perspective on an issue, and you are done.  People made up their mind in that split second.

The police and the government are in a no win situation.  Don’t push hard enough, you get criticized for not doing your job.  Push too hard, your are charged with police brutality.  The gray area is about as big as the period at the end of this sentence.

There is enough ranting going on, I don’t need/want to add my voice to it all. I don’t want to debate police actions, or how the G20 cost us taxpayers billions of dollars to hold.  Go on twitter or Youtube and search G20 to see it all.  What screams to me is the social web – the availability of real-time information, everybody being a reporter, and everyone being able to be heard.  Nobody can control what gets published anymore.  And there is definitely an argument that can be made about the quantity vs. the quality of information out there, so you have to take it all in with a grain of salt.  There is definitely still a place for good journalism – Globe and Mail – Toronto mayor amongst many expressing revulsion over protest violence – A good article I found though Twitter of course.

Was there an opportunity for the police and the government to use social media to help it’s case and share information to balance some perspective?  Possibly, but given the numbers, it might not have mattered.

And when my chair started moving back and forth last week, I opened twitter, and saw that an earthquake had just occurred outside of Ottawa, being felt all over South Western Ontario, with real-time tweets coming in every few seconds confirming and describing it.

Raw information, right away, from people just like you and me.  Can you handle it?